Now this is where things get really complicated. In the previous discussion I suggested that we are unable to escape our thoughts. But is this correct? An experienced meditation master would probably disagree. You see the idea of meditation is to do just that, escape from our own perpetual flux of thoughts while remaining conscious or aware. The Hindus and Buddhists call this perpetual flux of thoughts Samsara and refer to it as the root of all evil. Sogyal Rinpoche discusses it with wit and wisdom in his book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. I could discuss it with cool conviction too because I'm in it everyday, and so are you. Waking up, having breakfast, getting the kids off to school, working, shopping, laughing, loving is what Samsara is all about. It also entails all the essential non-essentials of modern life like having the car repaired and putting the garbage out, the arguments and ego fixations like chocolate, diets, hair styles, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, sex, crime and suicide.
Suicide is the ultimate ego trip.
The trance- state that I experienced alerted me to the fact that the mind is capable of very different levels of consciousness from what I previously imagined. Even sleep is, in my opinion, a hang over from an earlier evolutionary period when plants didn't think and animals had little more to think about than their empty bellies. However, unlike the Hindus and the Buddhists I don't believe the finite mind ever merges fully and forever with the metaphysical Overself. Apart from the fact this eventuality seems to make life a sheer waste of time, it invalidates the immortal existence of a perfect personality like that of Jesus of Nazareth who supposedly not only overcame the world but authored the book called A Course in Miracles.
I'm beginning to think that the trance- state merely enables a person to meet or come in contact with the maximal spiritual essence of him or herself that he/she is capable of meeting at the time. This profound religious experience is commonly called baptism. In other words his/her spirit bears witness with spirit or rather he/she gets to touch base with eternity. I also believe that further along the track immortality and heaven awaits, where heaven can be described as a kind of highly populated, service oriented, spiritually progressive cosmic career. In addition I believe that reincarnation is a man-made explanation/justification for such a profound transitional experience whilst the apparent recall of past lives, for whatever appropriate reason, is the dipping into or the channeling of the universal sub conscious or the Cosmic Mind. In my polite as possible opinion -
Buddha was a gifted psychologist but not a cosmologist.
However when a measure of success in meditation is achieved, lovely things can indeed happen. Peace and bliss and a feeling of oneness may arise spontaneously. You just have to read the discourses written by some of the medieval mystics, Saint Theresa, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas. These were largely ordinary, but conscientious men and women whose secluded communal life was dedicated to subduing their minds, that is, their evil or rather negative thought patterns about everyone and everything. To subdue the devil, that is, eradicate so-called sin, what they did was to think positively, that is, respond without mis-interpretation or judgment to their continual flux of thoughts and in certain cases, suspend thought altogether thereby discovering within themselves a deep well of peace, love and fulfillment.
Eternity is like an orgasm,
Identify it,
Locate its centre,
Put it on hold,
Then stretch it out.
No wonder Nuns wanted to be Brides of Christ. The rewards were out of this world.
And also this poem in 1975 when I was 16 years old.
Oh, was I ever innocent?
Did not time tempt my wholesome willing soul
To the place where men and women
Learn to love?
Was not my conscience arrested?
Only to be devoured again
By the guardian of the flesh.
With all my heart
I wish it could be so.
For in that tremolant state
What sensations I might feel
What knowledge I might aquire
What fears I might transcend
In that fleeting, but vital instant
Of living awareness.
Normally, due to the perpetual activity of our mind, the pictures we project onto the screen in front of our eyes, with or without our eyes open, is continuous. What lies behind that continuous flux is the observer or the witness to our own reality, pure primordial Mind, or God, if you like. If we could control our minds enough presumably we would be one with God, that is, not apparently separate. This does not mean we would become puppets or robots but that we could educate our egos to perform better. At last, we'd be fully human.
Breathe more slowly,
Think more slowly,
Live more slowly,
Only then can God catch up with you.
The wonderful book, A Course in Miracles, talks about all of this if you're interested, but for the moment I'll stick with Paul Brunton and re-invent the wheel.
I admit to smiling smugly whenever a new theory about the origin of the universe appears. I can't help but think we'd save ourselves a lot of trouble by owning up to our mistakes. The Big Bang, Singularity, Genesis, Creation Event or whatever you like to call it, was not a momentous material event, but a slowly evolving interplay of ideas and influences, causes and effects, emerging, like train tickets, from the vending machine of God's own spirit/mind. His reality, as well as our own, is a karmic field where three interconnecting/interdependent layers of spiritual, mental and physical energy conditioned by personality and maintained by a highly skilled and competent angelic task force help determine the course of personal, planetary and universal evolution.
Spirit (Higher Self) + Mind + Personality = Evolving Soul
A particularly vivid dream of mine revealed this to me. A page of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom was laid out before me showing all my notes and corrections. Above the material copy was a shimmering essence. In that instant of time I received several major impressions. The first was the enormous depth and breadth of individual, human potential. In other words, just how gifted we all really are. Layers of hidden talents and tendencies opened up a vista of opportunity.
In that instant of time I saw TE Lawrence, and myself, as God might see us. The striking thing was that I/He only saw the good. Another strong impression was this: that there are three different levels or dimensions of reality. These included the co-ordinate physical, mental and spiritual levels or dimensions that karmically combine to produce a potentially unified, fulfilled or perfect whole.
The world is indeed a stage, like Shakespeare said, and we are all players upon it.
If we were to really know ourselves we would have to know everything about ourselves in an instant, like G Buddha. All our past, present and future at once, all our hidden human potential, or personality. Only then would we really know why we did things, and why things worked out the way they did. Likewise if we are to really know anybody else.
I wrote this in Miracle of the Desert:The Untold Story several months before I had confirmed all this.
Long after Ned and the others slept I sat before the fire. From its store of blackened coals red hot particles rose into the air transforming into glittering threads in my fixed stare. I accepted the realization that what is real and what is imaginary depends solely on one's perspective. Physical, emotional and spiritual reality is but one's personal hallucination and as durable as daydreams. Such a shifting foundation for decision making must surely be the cause of all unrest and unhappiness in the world. The idea sent a shiver through me as if I had divined evil. If only we could read each other's minds and hearts, I thought, then mis-understanding need never threaten us.
The same goes for the universe. To really know the universe one would have to know everything all at once. One would have to be on intimate terms with eternity. Otherwise who are we to judge? Seriously now, can you really afford the luxury of presuming you can judge someone else? Are you so squeaky clean, so informed, so perfect? Of course you're not, and neither am I? To really know the world we would have to expand our awareness to a higher dimension, see the big picture. In other words become cosmically conscious, not merely self- conscious. So:
Judgment should be outlawed.
Our experience of the world we know is through our senses. We have already covered this area and have shown that without our senses life isn't worth living, but what if our senses were an idea by which we could experience a world of our own making? And what does that say about the body and the senses?
What if the body and the senses are ideas too?
Now let's get really serious.
We said just before that it is well nigh impossible to escape our thoughts except perhaps through meditation. This being the case, then in order to change the world all we need to do is change our thoughts. Does this mean we can think vicious thoughts and hurt an enemy and get away with it? The Old Black Magic Trick. No it doesn't.
Like all successful biological systems the universe incorporates a positive feed back mechanism, or more profoundly, a total security system.
In other words what you put in to it you get back again. Feed it lots of negative impulses and that's what you get. Likewise if you feed it lots of positive impulses that's what you get back. Thank goodness most of us think positive thoughts predominantly or else how bad could it get? So…
I thank everyone I have ever known,
Those I haven't yet met,
And those I shall never meet.
And what does this remind you of? The Law of Karma I mentioned before. Give and you shall receive, what goes around comes around, cause and effect, getting your just deserts, you earned it and so on.
Recall that I mentioned all the irrepressible symbolism the world offers. Well this is just another example. It's not just me re-inventing the wheel. It's everyone all the time.
We all steal each other's lines.
What happens that hasn't happened before in one way or another? Hasn't it ever occurred to you that we go around and around in circles. We take the same train ride over and over and over again.
Ego = vortex
Just think about night and day, the seasons, the lunar cycle, the water cycle, the menstrual cycle, hair styles, fashion, books, films, governments, Attila the Hun, the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisiton, World War 1, the Holocaust, The Faukland's War, Desert Storm and yet another timely warning in recent months! Just how many rapacious repeats do we need?
Bob Dylan expressed it beautifully in, Blowing in the Wind.
God isn't stupid. He knows what can happen undoubtedly will happen. Subsequent to super-consciousness or the emergence of ego and therefore free will, when our minds began to separate from His, or at least thought they were separating from His, He was prepared for it. He made sure that there would be something to remind us of our proper place in the universe, and this we call many things such as the Higher Self, the Overself, or the Holy Spirit.
When we cross it we aren't happy. When we're not behaving in a loving way, we're not happy. We crucify ourselves. We're our own worst enemy, and our own best friend. Even the most hardened killer has a Higher Self. He may be totally confused about everything, but he knows he's unhappy, and so he hopes by attacking something he will feel better, but he doesn't, so he attacks again, and still the unhappiness remains. That something inside him is imploring him to listen, to turn around and take notice, to reconsider, to think loving thoughts instead of indulging in soul destroying self- pity.
The language of wounds is okay as far as it goes, but let's not get carried away with that either. The more we talk about woundedness, the more wounds we'll encounter. The same lessons will have to be learned over and over again.
Self- indulgence is inevitably self- defeating.
During and after the First World War TE Lawrence's personal and political situation was so bad he contemplated suicide a number of times. He felt responsible and blamed himself for everything.
However according to ACIM, Attack is never justified.
Blame is just another ego ploy made to shift guilt from one party to another. It solves no problems, it just rearranges them thereby giving our insane egos time to withdraw or plan another attack. Our parents may well have been limited in skill and capacity as carers, but our egos are a bi-product of the interaction between our personality with the physical/psychological environment. Even blaming oneself is cop-out. So,
Let's introduce a NO BLAME policy.
The relationship between our spirit/mind, personality and ego is responsible for most, if not all decisions in life, where time provides us the opportunity to establish a successful working relationship. In other words our personal Karmic Vision is heavily influenced by the unique shadow qualities of each and every individual personality.
Fortunately the study of twins helps prove the existence of unique personality.Twins may be physically similar but they rarely possess similar personalities. I look forward to the time our scientists can successfully clone a human being. It will, at last, prove that genes are not the determiners of personality, and are therefore not the determiners of destiny either. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't get another Hitler from Hitler, or another Jesus from Jesus.
In fact, seeing that we're talking about Jesus, God gave Him a clear- cut job description.
Remind my children that they were all created perfect and prove to them that they're immortal.
Our Higher Self is unrelenting although it never punishes or retaliates, but just watches and waits, listens and reminds. It bides its time.
God isn't a judge. He's a juggler.
He knows that we think and do to ourselves and each other is punishment enough. Purgatory is nothing more than our Higher Self giving us a big kick up the proverbial arse!
That's why getting to know your self can be a killer!
How many of you talk to yourselves in private?
Well who, or what, do you think you're talking to?
You're talking to your self, of course.
And who or what are you?
Now that's a question worth answering and so I shall try.
To think at all presupposes a thinking mind. Therefore the self that you think of must be supported or sustained by something else. This seems to suggest that behind every good mind there's an even better one. But is each of our minds sustained by a unique one, or the same one? Sheer logic must answer this question. If a single mind didn't sustain our apparently separate minds, then surely we wouldn't all share a worldview; instead we would experience something purely personal like our dreams. All forms of communication would cease. The world would cease to be. So it seems to me that we must all be sustained by a single entity, which, if you like, apportions itself uniquely. Jung called this the collective subconscious. He used the rhizome metaphor to describe it. Come to think of it, didn't Jesus refer to Himself as the vine and us as the branches too? In his profoundly reverent way, Saint Augustine, recognized it too.
Confessions (XVII) 26
Great is the power of memory, a fearful thing: O my God, a deep and boundless manifold: and this thing is the mind, and this am I myself.
Figure 2 represents this idea, where mind projecting itself from spirit (self) so as to experience its own manifestation. This is a bit like a film being projected onto a screen or a new document on the computer. However rather than the film running passed our eyes perception is altered without us even realizing it.
Initially this idea gave me the creeps. I thought, how dare he, meaning God, create us from his Spirit/Mind and then subject us to all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I thought that maybe he was a vengeful God after all, either that or he'd lost his mind. However this seemed to make no sense either, and as my goal was to Seek Only Truth, I kept on going. Although my background is virtually devoid of any religious content or instruction my instinct was that the universe does have meaning. Nihilism may be acceptable for some people but I'm a mother. I have a vested interest in salvation. Also institutionalized religion irritated me to the point I wanted nothing to do with it. The fairy stories and superstitions simply drove me to distraction… I have a Science Degree for goodness sake…Feed the Man Meat: So the search for the Holy Grail continued up philosophical hills and down Dreamtime dales, through archetypal forests and around reincarnation roundabouts until I was too befuddled to realize I'd already arrived. I came to rest in a steamy swamp just outside of Paradise, content to swelter in the heat of the noon day sun until all my friends come to join me.
Isn't language fun! So contrived, yet so convincing - a super- slick symbol of Samsara.
No wonder Jesus chose not to leave a written record. The risk of misinterpretation was too great. The biggest mistake ever made was to misinterpret His words follow me. What He really meant was be like me, which is the very essence of His glorious, self-realizing and universe- fulfilling message.
Oddly, Plato said something similar about the persuasiveness of language in The Republic, and so too Saint Augustine in Confessions.
Here's Augustine again in characteristic style:
Confessions (XVIII) 27
All which things being heard and well considered, I will not strive about words; for that is profitable to nothing, but the subversion of the hearers.
Now if it indeed be the case that we are offspring of the Cosmic Mind how come we're so mixed up? So devastatingly self- destructive?
Good question.
And the answer is – Evil or error is the result of an apparent two-phase process of evolution. The first being a largely physical/mindal (material/intellectual) phase and the second a mindal/spiritual phase which happens to be representative/symbolic of the other.
As I indicated before, post trance my big mistake was to confuse psychology with cosmology only to realize a little later that the two are intimately related. The phrase God made man in His own image has such breadth and depth of connotation I scarcely know where to begin. God being all there is accounts for all things material, mindal and spiritual. Whilst I believe the first phase of evolution was largely Darwinian, although I suspect it entailed a significant amount of angelic help, I believe the second phase is largely quantum or shared. However, essentially it's all quantum or thought or word, because it's all God to begin with. The universe is peculiarly paradoxical, however proceeding, with the help of time, to tie up its own loose ends. This is the true definition of divine providence. The excellent science writer Paul Davies calls it a self-consistent casual loop. I call it The Circle of Eternity.
Once established as thinking, feeling, decision-making individuals the real challenge began. Unlike our plant and animal ancestors we became capable of influencing/co-creating/sharing our destiny. The ego, which is a psychological response to a cosmological pre-planned inevitability, announced the exciting arrival of free-will beings. But like all children we asserted our independence, ate of the Tree of Good and Evil – tried doing our own thing. Consequently we are estranged from the Garden of Eden – we've run away, left home, but not necessarily in the physical sense, but in the mental sense. Like all ideas, good and bad, pure and sinful, the idea of homelessness caught on. Over what surely must have been a very long time individual ways of thinking emerged, that is separate egos. Not that we are ever really separate from the Cosmic Mind or God, but we can think we can. Distinctions, levels, categories, rules and regulations, institutions, religions and conventions emerged. Fundamentalism reigned. More than likely, when we were created, back in the good old days, we had as much freedom of choice as God did, and we still do. After all, we are individuals endowed with free will. The nature of the Cosmic Mind might seem strange but when you really think about it, it isn't at all.
Please consider this, when you think of something is it ever lost?
The answer is no. It might leave your awareness but it is never lost. At some point in time it is likely to return. Just think about something, a name or place you can't recall, you ask it either inwardly or outwardly, and sometime later it comes back to you. This includes the question about the possible existence of God, otherwise how would we ever know to question the existence of God in the first place, memes notwithstanding?
There's that clever Karma again, that positive feed back mechanism I was talking about before. Questions are answered, new ideas arise and long held dreams really do come true. Only by consistently identifying with our eternal nature, our inherent spirit, that is, our immortality, and less with the mortal body, will our negative creations be neutralized. Jesus identified with his immortal soul so closely He wasn't afraid of anything.
And when, on the cross, he said," Forgive them Father for they know not what they do," he really meant it.
WOW! If that's the case then how can we begin?
We heal the perceived separation, we atone, we identify with the prodigal son instead of our separated selves and head for home, but this assumes we were separated in the first place doesn't it? And were we? How could we be? We all are of the same mind, the Cosmic Mind, the Oneness of the Universe and All That Jazz!
No, of course we're not separate from God, we are all one with God, and we're already home except we don't realize it. Self awareness is a brick wall etc etc. It won't be until we're reconditioned that Heaven and Earth shall pass away. It could take forever, or it could be NOW.
We don't need hormone replacement therapy,
or vitamin supplements,
but negative thought replacement therapy,
and a good dose of Love.
I know, I know, my verse is getting worse. Heavens, even that rhymes!
Now you might be asking how it is I can be so supremely confident about all of this. Well that's a fair enough question. Just after my trance, that wonderful mystical experience, I wrote down my impressions. Like I said before, I felt like I'd been spinning around in a spiral, a vortex, and that I had seen everything and knew everything but couldn't remember a thing. My body was vibrating internally as though ready to shatter into a million pieces. I longed for death. I was blissfully happy. I wanted to save the world. The next day I rang Volunteers Abroad and started making get- away plans. I wanted to give everything I owned away. I cried a lot. I thought I'd gone completely mad so I brushed up on psychotic episodes in the DSM-111-R, but the feeling of immense power and immeasurable love was real. That love stayed with me for nearly three weeks, and I knew it was the return of the love I had given to Lawrence while writing the book about him. I knew my ego boundaries had completely dissolved, that my sins had been washed away. I also knew we were all meant to feel this way about each other. I told a friend something to that effect. Luckily it didn't phase her. Once something like this is experienced there is no denying it. There is no going back. I simply can't do a Peter. And seriously, who would want to? As unbelievable as all this may seem, and regardless of whether I'm right or wrong, or I've lost touch with perceived reality, you must surely agree that it is a very positive theory. No one can lose by thinking more positively and lovingly.
Salvation is no double- edged sword.
There is no danger.
It is the classic win - win situation.
The essence of the Theory of Universal Fulfillment is this – Forget the past and learn to love. Forget the past, not because it's gone, but because it's more-than-likely the bi-product of a series of profound misinterpretations and self centered conditions. Learn to love your neighbour as yourself, because he/she is you. What you do to them you do to yourself. The Karmic clock or positive feed back mechanism will continue to take its toll as long as we attack each other, either in our minds or with external actions. They as good as amount to the same thing anyway. Our negative thoughts about other people and ourselves are the Buddhist obscurities or Christian temptations. They are also the things we have to learn to forgive, overlook because they are our own to begin with. On this planet we categorize behaviour, deem some types as particularly anti-social because it threatens the body. We accuse transgressors, judge them and lock them up. But are these sins any more sinful than many other ego-based sins we excuse, and sometimes worship?
How many self-defensive, attack-prone action heroes like Robin Hood and the Terminator do we really need?
The physical or mental form the ego uses to express itself simply doesn't matter. What matters is this. Those that err, no matter what form their error takes, are asking for help, compassion and love. They are lost. If our response is inappropriate we hurt ourselves as well.
Didn't Jesus himself mix with the so-called sinners and the poor in spirit? In the true sense of the word Love can only give. So in essence, if God is Love he can only give. Its not His fault the world is as it is, it is yours' and mine. We were here (in spirit) at the beginning of time and we'll be here until the end of time.
Please consider this.
Everything you think and do, in other words, cause, has an effect somewhere, either directly in the way you feel and the mood you have, or indirectly on someone else. You cannot escape the results of your own thoughts and actions no matter what you think at the time. Therefore, the basis of forgiveness is not nearly so altruistic as it seems. It's a fundamental survival tactic. Those that believe that charity is for suckers should think again. The power of love should not be underestimated.
In the insightful words of the late John Lennon –
We're playing those mind games together…
And just what does he mean when he wrote projecting our images in space and in time? Well to find out we must explore the very origins of the universe itself. And I send my love and gratitude to Yoko Ono.
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